Trump's "We Will Be Back" speech and Nazi Germany

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The "Beer Hall Putsch" was a first attempt at overthrowing the Weimar Republic by Hitler's Nazi Party in November 1923.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch#cite_note-gordon-6

"Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazi Party members and four police officers.

Hitler, who was wounded during the clash, escaped immediate arrest and was spirited off to safety in the countryside. After two days, he was arrested and charged with treason."

His trial spanning several weeks only served to give him a platform to share nationalist rhetoric and gain infamy. While in prison, Hitler dictated the hateful manifesto known as Mein Kampf, and he was released just 9 months into his 5-year sentence by a judge sympathetic to the Nazi Party.

"Once released, Hitler redirected his focus towards obtaining power through legal means rather than by revolution or force, and accordingly changed his tactics, further developing Nazi propaganda."

This new "era" of propaganda began after Hitler convinced the authorities to relax a ban on the Nazi Party, with his re-establishment of the Nazi-published newspaper Völkischer Beobachter in February 1925. With little access to mass media, the Nazi Party relied mostly on public meetings by Hitler and other speakers.

"In April 1930, Hitler appointed Goebbels head of party propaganda. Goebbels, a former journalist and Nazi party officer in Berlin, soon proved his skills. Among his first successes was the organization of riotous demonstrations that succeeded in having the American anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front banned in Germany."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Nazi_Germany#Early_Nazi_Party

"The Nazis contested elections to the national parliament (the Reichstag) and to the state legislature (the Landtage) from 1924, although at first with little success. The "National Socialist Freedom Movement" polled 3% of the vote in the December 1924 Reichstag elections and this fell to 2.6% in 1928. State elections produced similar results. Despite these poor results and despite Germany's relative political stability and prosperity during the later 1920s, the Nazi Party continued to grow."

The party's success was partly due to Hitler, who had little administrative ability, being able to delegate roles to more effective individuals in the party. Organizers and propagandists worked below him to spread the Nazi's nationalist rhetoric, and party support grew from its Bavarian base to rural Protestants and economically depressed working class.

"Depressed working-class areas such as Thuringia also produced a strong Nazi vote, while the workers of the Ruhr and Hamburg largely remained loyal to the Social Democrats, the Communist Party of Germany or the Catholic Centre Party. Nuremberg remained a Nazi Party stronghold, and the first Nuremberg Rally was held there in 1927. These rallies soon became massive displays of Nazi paramilitary power and attracted many recruits. The Nazis' strongest appeal was to the lower middle-classes—farmers, public servants, teachers and small businessmen—who had suffered most from the inflation of the 1920s, so who feared Bolshevism more than anything else. The small business class was receptive to Hitler's antisemitism, since it blamed Jewish big business for its economic problems. University students, disappointed at being too young to have served in the War of 1914–1918 and attracted by the Nazis' radical rhetoric, also became a strong Nazi constituency. By 1929, the party had 130,000 members."

"Despite these [propaganda and organizational strengths from delegation], the Nazi Party might never have come to power had it not been for the Great Depression and its effects on Germany. By 1930, the German economy was beset with mass unemployment and widespread business failures. The Social Democrats and Communists were bitterly divided and unable to formulate an effective solution: this gave the Nazis their opportunity and Hitler's message, blaming the crisis on the Jewish financiers and the Bolsheviks, resonated with wide sections of the electorate. At the September 1930 Reichstag elections, the Nazis won 18% of the votes and became the second-largest party in the Reichstag after the Social Democrats. Hitler proved to be a highly effective campaigner, pioneering the use of radio and aircraft for this purpose. His dismissal of Strasser and his appointment of Goebbels as the party's propaganda chief were major factors. While Strasser had used his position to promote his own leftish version of national socialism, Goebbels was totally loyal to Hitler and worked only to improve Hitler's image.

The 1930 elections changed the German political landscape by weakening the traditional nationalist parties, the DNVP and the DVP, leaving the Nazis as the chief alternative to the discredited Social Democrats and the Zentrum, whose leader, Heinrich Brüning, headed a weak minority government. The inability of the democratic parties to form a united front, the self-imposed isolation of the Communists and the continued decline of the economy, all played into Hitler's hands. He now came to be seen as de facto leader of the opposition and donations poured into the Nazi Party's coffers. Some major business figures, such as Fritz Thyssen, were Nazi supporters and gave generously[74] and some Wall Street figures were allegedly involved,[75] but many other businessmen were suspicious of the extreme nationalist tendencies of the Nazis and preferred to support the traditional conservative parties instead."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#Rise_to_power:_1925%E2%80%931933

I could keep talking about more sections of this part of history, because every bit of it is insane and very... familiar, and it's beginning to worry me. I don't even know what to say except that we need to resist this tendency to back mindless angry nationalist tendencies. We need to support one another and look to a future where everyone can prosper, not bitterly fight and leave the people out to dry, so they feel they have no choice but to back crazy people feeding them great promises.

Working class people in The United States are suffering. I see it in my daily life, people are tacitly supporting Donald Trump, because he claims to offer an alternative to the mainstream. He will probably get off without any legal charges for his crimes before and during his presidency, and we know a portion of many of the donations he received from supporters to "challenge the election" actually went to funding a Public Action Committee so that he can influence politics in the future.

He's spent the last year prepping people to distrust the election, and then as expected, denying the election results. Every time Trump talks about anything, he spends 2 minutes on the topic then jumps off to talking about how everyone hates him and the election is rigged, then devolves into vague nationalist rhetoric. But it works. It polls well, because it's a vague but simple promise of a future to people who feel that nobody else is fighting for them.

My greatest fear is that Joe Biden will be the do-nothing President that I expected of him for most of 2019 as I supported Bernie Sanders. The corrupt corporate and propaganda machines that allowed Trump to rise in 2016 stifles real change in candidates like Bernie, so even though his policy positions poll extremely well even in areas more supportive of Trump, Biden won the primary. Now, Biden is making some lukewarm promises at best, and I'm not even sure if he will live up to them. I certainly doubt his ability to improve conditions enough that people won't be desperate enough to vote for Trump in the future.

If Trump uses his selfish nationalist rhetoric to close off our country from the world, tensions will rise. His business ties will inevitably lead to further endless wars as the military industrial complex requires fuel for its fire.

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

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3 years ago

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Nice

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Trust in president, the country won't unite if its citizen is against their leader.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Hi, do you support trump? I am not American. so I don't understand about trump and biden. But in my opinion, all centralized ruler and authority are the same. namely, perpetuating the way capitalism continue to enrich themselves with their business.

$ 0.10
3 years ago

If Trump got his way on things,

At worst, he is a selfish nationalist who would close down our country, increase tension with other nations, and lead to a totalitarian state where our endless wars continue forever to increase the profits of corporate elite.

At best, all that stuff is true except instead of totalitarian we get a feudal state where everyone is left out to die and companies have very little liability for harming their workers, debtors would probably have more power, basically making regular people slaves.

Lol. Maybe that's too cynical. But no, I don't support Trump.

Biden isn't much better, but I have hope that he can be pushed to do some things, and I see him as a sort of center position where Trump is hard-line not what we need. At least if the government prints money to send checks to every American, or minimum wage is increased, or healthcare is less expensive, maybe it helps to pull the balance a bit back towards them. Trump would just keep giving tax cuts to billionaires, and either way our debt increases. I really don't know what the best solution is.

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Okay sorry

$ 0.00
3 years ago

Okay

$ 0.00
3 years ago